The Pretend Boyfriend
by smiley face 1996
Summary: Bella lives in a lonely world, neglected and depressed, she has no one to turn to. In order to escape the numbness she decides to fall in love. Her choice: bad boy Edward Cullen.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: I don't own twilight._

_AN: Normally chapters will be longer, but I just wanted to get this part out there. _

**Prologue**

My parents didn't love each other. I'd known this fact as long as I could remember.

It wasn't that they hated each other, on the contrary they had a "highly functioning, mutually beneficial relationship" – my mother's words – but they didn't love each other. They'd met at university. Both of them had been ambitious and run in the same circles, so when people around them began to hook up, it seemed only logical for them to do the same. And that was their marriage in a nutshell: cold and clinical, filled with logic and lacking in passion.

My parent's attitude towards me was similar. When I was doing well academically they were pleased with me and at dinner I would get the token "how was your day" and "that's nice dear", little things that might even be considered affectionate so long as I was a good robot child. When I wasn't doing so well they pretty much ignored me, apart from occasional disappointed glances.

They ignored me a lot just recently

Perhaps growing up in that environment is why, at the age of sixteen, I was so desperate to be loved.


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I don't own twilight._

**Chapter 1**

"Bella! Hey, Bella, wait a sec."

The voice brought me out of my contemplation of the pavement. I turned to see Alice Cullen jogging to catch up.

"You seem lost in your own world. What's on your mind?" she asked, falling into step beside me.

I liked Alice, but I wouldn't have considered her a friend; other than living on the same street and going to the same school, we didn't have much in common. She was completely infatuated with her boyfriend Jasper, had been since the moment he moved in next door to her. They did everything together – hell, they were so in sync that when one of them had to go to the toilet the other would go as well – so I was kind of surprised to see her now. She usually caught a lift with Jasper, who in the year above at seventeen had just got his driving license.

"Hi Alice," I gave her a hesitant smile. "I was just thinking, y'know? Where's Jasper?"

"I don't know actually. It was my brother Edward that did psychology…" she paused here, and I remembered that Edward had dropped out the year before. "Jasper staying with his dad for a while – you remember his parents got divorced – and his dad lives on the other side of town. Anyway, tell me what's eating you."

I could have said that I was lonely, that my parents thought I might be a failure. I could even have said that I knew I was a failure, complete with rubbish grades in infrequent sessions with the school counsellor when I when I couldn't avoid them.

Instead I went with, "I was just thinking about the history exam, that's all. The one on the reformation of Europe." It wasn't a complete lie, I had been anxious about it, but I'd already made up my mind to hide in the toilets and screw the consequences. Better to let people think you're a moron than to get a panic attack in the exam room and prove it to world and all that.

"You don't like exams much do you?" she said, eyeing me shrewdly.

A snort broke from my lips. "How'd you figure?"

"Well, there was that one time you ran out of a maths test to go throw up in the bathroom. And then there was the time–"

"Stop," I told her, turning red. I hadn't realized people knew about the throwing up incident.

"It doesn't matter," she assured me hastily. "Nobody likes exams. Horrible things. Nasty, nasty things" she added for good measure. Another pause then, "But I thought you liked history. You always used to be the first to answer questions in class. And wasn't there that one time in year eight that your essay was commended in assembly?"

"Yeah, but that was in year eight. I was thirteen. I just surprised you even remember." I genuinely was; Alice had never seemed to pay much attention to me in the past, always part of the popular crowd, more concerned with partying that work.

"You used to be the best at everything. Then you just stopped… What happened?"

I shrugged, looking away. "Things change. I don't mean to be rude, but why the sudden interest? We never really spoke much before this." A grey cloud was looming over the tops of the houses ahead of us, dark and ominous. Great. We were about to be rained on.

"You are a girl my age that I live close to. It makes sense for us to be friends." She accompanied this sentence with a cheerful grin.

"We never were before."

Now it was her turn to shrug. "You never looked like you needed a friend before."

I glanced up at her in surprise, reacting before I could think, "Oh, I've needed friends before. Didn't have them then, don't need them now." Wait. Where had that come from? Hurt flashed across Alice's face and I quickly backtracked. "I'm sorry, that came out wrong. I guess a friend would be welcome."

A big smile spread across her face. "Great! We can hang out at lunch."

I didn't know what to say to that and we continued walking in companionable silence.

My school isn't massive, though it seems that way when you first see it from the street. A cluster of new buildings in an old area, it stands out like a sore thumb, or rather a flash of red in a monochromatic world. The year before I arrived somebody burned the old building down. It had happened in the night, so nobody was hurt, and despite a feeble investigation, the perpetrators were never found. When they rebuilt it they took the opportunity improve: the new campus was "hip and modern", with separate blocks for the different subjects, a new cafeteria that could seat over two hundred students and a student parking lot. It was to there that we now headed.

"Jasper!" Alice called as his beat up old ford came into view.

As soon as he had parked he leapt out and engulfed her in a hug, placing a sweet kiss on her forehead. They made a beautiful couple, the one tall blonde and gorgeous with the lean, muscled body of an athlete and the other short and petite with pale alabaster skin that contrasted sharply with her dyed blue-black hair. Alice looked up at Jasper with such adoration and love.

A pang of envy went through me and I wondered, not for the first time, whether I was capable loving someone like that. Or would I be like my parents, forever cold and hard, growing gradually more bitter as I aged.

It was then that I decided that I wanted to be in love. Not in a relationship – I had learned long ago that if you let people get too close they would only disappoint you – so I would love him from a distance, letting my imagination mould him into the perfect boyfriend.

It needed to be someone I could see, so that they would be real enough, corporeal enough to love, and yet distant enough that it was highly unlikely I would ever talk to them and have my illusions shattered.

Just then a motorcycle road up to Alice. Whoa. The boy on it was beautiful. He wasn't effeminate, quite the opposite; his face had a hard symmetry, his bronze hair set off by his bright, piercing emerald eyes. His leather jacket and jeans did little to disguise his muscular frame, and something about him he made me think of an ancient warrior, his bike as his stallion and his leather his armour.

"Hi, Edward. What do you–" Alice began. I didn't listen to the rest.

Edward. Edward Cullen. He would do nicely.

And so Edward Cullen became my pretend boyfriend.


End file.
